Recently, at the Richland County Public Library, we have started to digitize the obituaries found on our online obituary index. We are starting with obituaries, from The State newspaper, of soldiers who died while in service during WWI. We chose the WWI obits for a couple of reasons. First, they are in the public domain. Secondly, we liked the idea of working with a finite collection. Obituaries never end but a collection of these obits will have a beginning and an end. Once we see how the process works we can expand the project.
The other consideration we had was storage. Our Tech Services Manager did not want the library to be in the storage business for the large jpeg files that these images create. He had the idea to put our obit images on Flickr. We were relunctant, at first. However, it turned out to be a brilliant idea.
To take a look at the project go to Flickr and search for "Archie DeShields". It will take you to his obituary and the entire WWI obituary set that we have completed so far. We would love to hear what you think about the project.
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